The Medical Innovation Threat

The attack on a near-cure for Hepatitis C is a prelude to price controls.

Updated Aug. 20, 2014 6:49 p.m. ET

An invasive species has been introduced into the U.S. health innovation ecosystem, with a growing danger of permanent damage to the development of specialty drugs. The relentless assault on the price of Sovaldi is becoming a threat to the 30-year political balance that has energized the biomedical revolution.

Sovaldi is the kind of medicine that the drug scolds claim to want—a true scientific advance with a near-perfect cure rate for Hepatitis C, the liver-destroying virus that infects one of every 100 Americans and some...